Amelia LEGACY

PARKER DIDN’T SAY ONE WORD as he drove me to my old apartment, and I loved him for that. I was deep in thought about what I wanted to say, what Thad might say. And I felt this dark sadness wash through my very veins. Last week, I had been professing my love for the entire world to read. I had been that sure of my happily ever after. And now here I was: alone. Well, except for Parker.

Thad couldn’t help it if he liked men. But he didn’t have to marry me. He didn’t have to sweep me up into a fantasy of being starving(ish) writers together and living this romantic footloose and fancy-free, child-free life together.

“Liabelle, where are you staying?” Parker asked when we were almost to the apartment building that I had called home for so many years. “Do you want to stay with me?”

For a moment, it seemed like a tempting offer, but I waved it away. “Remember Philip who works for Clematis?” I couldn’t control the jealous pang that shot through me that he was still there and I was gone.

Parker nodded. “Oh, sure. I know Philip. Cool guy. Sheree is great too. I’ve seen them out and about.”

As we pulled into the parking lot, Parker put the car in park, looked over at me, and said, “Are you sure about this?”

I nodded resolutely.

Thad was standing in the doorway. He grabbed my hand, and I pulled it away. “Don’t!” I hissed, realizing how visceral my anger was.

“This way,” I said to Parker, as Thad trailed behind saying, “Amelia, I made a huge mistake. It was just an experiment.”

“Experiments are for college, Thad. Not your midthirties,” I said calmly as I emptied my drawers into my duffel bag. Parker emerged from my closet with a huge armful of clothes, and I couldn’t help myself. “Oh my God. Every man in my life is coming out of the closet these days.”

Parker laughed, not even nervously, as he left the room.

“But that’s just it,” Thad said. “It isn’t about that. It’s all about love. And I love you, Amelia. I really do.”

I stopped then and looked at him. “Thad, you have known me for six years. Does this seem like something that I am going to be okay with? Do you think the Amelia Saxton that you know is going to say, ‘Oh, Thad, I forgive your long and torrid love affair with the only man who has ever given me proper highlights?’ ” I slammed the drawer I was holding down on the bed.

Thad walked up to me and said soothingly, “People make mistakes. I made a mistake. Please give me another chance at our life.”

I wondered briefly if I was being hasty. I put my finger up and ran down the steps to the car, where Parker was deeply entrenched in a pile of hanging clothes.

“If I caught him with another woman, would I give him another chance?” I asked.

“Oh, um,” Parker said, “I’m not really—”

“I mean, am I being biased and judgmental in some way here?”

“Well, I—”

“No,” I decided, picturing a woman in her underwear on my couch. “No. I would be done either way. Hell, I’d be more done, if that’s possible.”

“So this is really more of a rhetorical line of questioning?” Parker said, pulling his head out of the car.

“Sorry,” I said. “I just want to make sure that I’m doing the right thing. Can you imagine that he wants me back? Of all the absurd things.”

“Well, sure, I can imagine that. You’re pretty irreplaceable.”

I smiled. That was nice.

Then I marched back upstairs and was startled to find that, in the time I had been gone, Kitty, Thad’s grandmother—wearing her choker pearls and pearl earrings instead of rhinestones—had appeared and was now sitting on the couch underneath her portrait, which was a little creepy.

She patted the space beside her. “Hi, Kitty,” I said.

“Hi, darling.” She leaned over, offering a cheek for a kiss. She smiled at me disapprovingly. “You’re making a mistake. That’s a good boy in there.”

I wasn’t just losing Thad. I was losing his family. His grandmother, his parents, his brother and sister, his aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews.

“Amelia, dear,” she continued, “I know that girls these days have certain ideas about their lives…” She trailed off, pursing her shockingly red lips. “But men have always had their little…” She waved her hand with a flourish. “Dalliances. But that’s all they are. Dalliances. You’re the wife.”

I rolled my eyes. Was she serious? “Kitty, I’m not going to spend my life as the woman who looks the other way.”

She gave me that vivacious smile of hers that I loved so much. “But, darling, you’re not looking the other way. No, no. This is freedom. While he’s doing what he wants to, you’re doing what you want to. No harm, no foul.” As she was painting the picture with her hands, it all started coming together for me. All the glamorous pictures of the sophisticated pool parties and Kitty and Bob arm in arm at galas and fund-raisers, drinking champagne and dancing and laughing. It was an arrangement; it was not forsaking all others until death do us part. My heart sank. Kitty and Bob weren’t true love. Thad and I weren’t, either. Maybe the mere idea of that kind of love was as fake as the rhinestones Kitty wore in that portrait.

Kitty interrupted my thoughts. “Do you understand, darling?”

I searched for someone to share a look of disbelief with, but the room was empty. Was she serious? All the pieces of the puzzle were coming together now. Kitty was funding Thad’s carefree “aspiring novelist” lifestyle—well, Kitty and I were. And if he didn’t do what she wanted, that was going to be over. Maybe Kitty didn’t want a divorced grandson. Maybe she didn’t want a gay grandson. Whatever her reasons, she wanted her grandson to stay married and had somehow persuaded him that he should try to do so. It was absurd, but not surprising. Kitty had Thad wrapped around her little finger, and if she was upset he could barely function.

Thad emerged from the bedroom, looking sheepish. I glared at him and said, “So this is why you want me back?”

I became even surer of my theory when Kitty chimed in, “I’m willing to make this worth your while.”

I locked eyes with Kitty and said, “If you think I can be bought, you don’t know me at all.”

Thad said, “No one is saying you can be bought, Amelia.”

Parker emerged from the bedroom, too, out of breath, his arms full and a duffel bag hanging off each shoulder. “I think that’s the last of it,” he said, huffing.

“It sure as hell is,” I said, following him out and slamming the door.

Embarrassingly, I burst into tears as I got into his front seat. Parker, sweaty, out of breath, and so cute it defied explanation, put his arm around my shoulder. “Anyone who cheats on you isn’t worth the price of the paper they’re printed on, Liabelle.” It didn’t make sense, but I found it oddly comforting. He removed his arm, started the ignition, and said, “You know what we’re going to do?”

I shrugged sullenly.

“We’re going to go pay a visit to my friend Hannah.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“She is the most vicious divorce attorney you’ll ever meet.”

I sniffed and nodded.

Parker added: “Then we’re going to go get Sheree and Philip, and I’m going to take you all to dinner to celebrate that Amelia Saxton is free, and the world is hers for the taking.”

My life, in less than a week, had gone to hell in a handbasket. But I had to admit that, when he put it that way, it didn’t sound half-bad.

---

Parker Thaysden can dance. I don’t know why I was so surprised by that. Sure, I figured he’d learned to waltz at cotillion. But I didn’t know he had, like, moves.

When we got back to Philip and Sheree’s place and were about to call it a night, I was only half-surprised to find twenty-plus cars in the driveway and all the furniture in the front two rooms moved out.

“It’s the Amelia Saxton Freedom Festival!” Philip shouted.

I laughed at the Old School reference, and, before I could worry about a party of this magnitude on a work night, realized I didn’t have a single place to be. “Philip, will you two ever grow up?”

He nodded emphatically. “Most certainly not, if we can help it.”

I kissed him on the cheek. “You are amazing. Thank you for letting me crash.”

I felt Sheree’s arm appear from behind me. Her curly hair was long and free down below her shoulders, and her pale skin was flushed from dancing. “Friends don’t let friends stay at cheap motels while they are having major life crises.”

I smiled, and she whispered, “I think Parker likes you.”

“Sheree, you’re a little tipsy.”

“Even still…” She trailed off as Parker came up, grabbed my hand, and pulled me out into the empty living room-turned-dance floor.

“I love this song!” he shouted to me.

I smiled at his enthusiasm as he spun me around and Fergie shouted through the speakers, “Tonight’s gonna be a good night. Tonight’s gonna be a good, good night!” I could never have imagined when I woke up this morning that I would have agreed with her.

“Thank you for tonight,” I said in his ear as he pulled me to him. “I feel much better.”

“Was it the champagne, the sushi, or the fact that Hannah thinks you can weasel cash out of Kitty if you sign an NDA?”

I laughed. “Thirty-three percent, thirty-three percent, thirty-three percent.”

Parker laughed, too, with a laugh I hadn’t seen since we were kids, throwing his head back, dimples showing. He was just too adorable for words. I was glad to see him a little bit happy after so much sadness.

A couple hours later, I walked him to his car. “Thank you again for everything, Parker. There aren’t a lot of men who would give a woman who woke them up and chewed them out such an amazing day. I couldn’t have faced all the hard stuff without you.”

“Cape Carolina peeps have to stick together,” he said, raising his hand for me to give him five. When I did, he clasped his hand around mine, and our eyes locked. For the tiniest of instants, I considered what might happen if I kept holding his hand, if I took one step toward him, if I leaned in just a little. Which would have been absurd, since I hadn’t even begun to mourn my separation and Parker was considering becoming a single dad. But the moment passed as quickly as it came, clearly nothing more than my imagination—and the wine.

“Plus,” he said, breaking the tension, “I really needed a day off from work.”

“And you did so much relaxing,” I joked as he opened his car door. “But, seriously, I don’t know how to say thank you.”

He slid in the car and said, “You don’t ever need to thank me, Liabelle. I’m always here for you.” He smiled. “Sleep tight.”

As I walked back inside the house, where dancing continued in the living room, I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face. Even better, I felt calm again. I was going to be okay: I had severance, I had a résumé, I had references. I locked the door to my temporary room, pulled on my favorite cotton pajamas, and slid between the covers. The featherbed over the mattress felt like a cloud in heaven, and the slightest scent of lavender on the crisp sheets should have put me right to sleep. But I found myself thinking about the file of surrogates on my nightstand. And the emergency Reese’s cups I’d hidden in the top drawer. I had filed for divorce today. I deserved some candy.

I put the first two candidates in the “no” pile and thought, These are the women Parker finds suitable to carry his dead wife’s baby? Greer’s journal entry peeked out from the back of the file. Digging into my emergency Reese’s cups, I couldn’t help myself. As I read about her embryos, her beautiful babies, I felt the tears streaming down my face.

Reading her words, I realized that, like it or not, I had become a part of their story long before. It was midnight, and the music was starting to die down, but I knew I would never be able to sleep now.

So I went to the kitchen, grabbed a gallon of milk, all the Girl Scout cookies, and my two new roommates, and said, “We have to talk about something. And it’s really, really big.”

“Oh my God! You did sleep with Parker,” Sheree quipped, nearly sober now.

I smirked. “I did not sleep with Parker.” I paused. “But I think I should have his baby.”

Sheree swallowed her Peanut Butter Patty, put her hands over mine, and said, “Um, sweetheart. Unless something has changed drastically, you are sort of egg-release-challenged.”

I took a deep breath. “You guys, Parker and Greer froze embryos before she died. And I accidentally found out they had been deemed abandoned. I set this whole crazy thing into motion by telling him, and now he wants to have his babies.”

I had never seen those two speechless before. But they were most definitely speechless now. “I know. It’s really big.”

“And he asked you to carry them?” Sheree asked. “I mean, isn’t that kind of a big thing to put on a person?”

I shook my head and plopped the file onto the breakfast room table, opening a new package of Thin Mints. “No, of course he didn’t ask me. But these surrogates are not suitable.”

Philip laughed. “They’re not raising the kids. They aren’t even donating an egg. They’re ovens, Amelia. I wouldn’t let it keep you up at night.”

I handed them Greer’s journal entry, and, three minutes later, Sheree was sobbing and Philip was clearing his throat repeatedly.

“That is literally the most heartbreaking thing I have ever read,” Sheree said, handing the paper back to me.

Philip nodded. “I agree. And don’t you kind of owe him your life?”

I thought back to that day on the beach. I did.

“So, are we on board? I mean, you’re the other two-thirds of my throuple. You’re going to be dealing with my mood swings and food cravings and crazy hours and morning sickness.”

“Nothing new there,” Philip said under his breath. Then he squeezed my wrist. “I’m kidding. I’m kidding.” But he was only half-kidding: it didn’t happen often, but when a doctor switched up my hormones or I couldn’t refill one of them on time or my general dosage needs had just changed and took a while to get back on track, I was more than a little off. My friends knew that better than anyone.

Sheree shot him a look. “What Philip means to say is that we are here to support you in whatever you choose, no matter how absolutely insane it seems. But, Amelia, I urge you to take a few months to think about this. You just had the biggest two bombs of your life dropped on you. I don’t think now is the time to make a huge decision.”

I knew logically she was right. This wasn’t the time to commit to something so monumental. But at the same time, I felt that tug that I had felt a lot lately, the one that meant I was ready for a new challenge. I wanted to do something more with my life. Something important. Greer McCann had left behind this whole huge legacy when she died at thirty-two. What had I done? How had I made the world a better place? And no, giving birth wasn’t the most creative or brand-new way to change the world. But it was the best thing I’d thought of in some time.

“Oh, oh!” Philip piped in. “If you decide to go through with it, can I be there when you tell your mom? Please, please, pretty please?”

Sheree cringed. “Not me. I wouldn’t touch that with a ten-foot pole.”

They began imitating my mother, arguing over what they thought she would say. But I was somewhere else, wondering how Parker would react. And, for the first time in my entire life, I realized that, despite what I had always been told, I might, one day, feel a baby growing inside of me after all.